Tom Hardy bloody loves a transformation role, doesn’t he. He’s always at it, not only changing his accent but his whole appearance for the sake of his job. What a pro.
I know, I know, it’s what actors do. But you have to admit, the guy always takes things a step further. From Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders, Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max in Mad Max: Fury Road and more recently Venom in – you guessed it – Venom, Tom sure knows how to keep the hair and makeup department busy.
And good on him. You have to commit to your craft. It took me ages to learn how to go to uni and be a lad but now look where I work.
Anyhoo, if the guy wasn’t busy enough being one of the darkest characters in the Marvel universe, he’s also currently making a film in which he portrays one of the darkest characters in American history – Al Capone.
It’s not the first time Tom has played notorious criminals, either. His portrayals of Charles Bronson in Bronson and both Reggie and Ronald Kray in Legend have given him more than enough practice at it. Not that you can pigeonhole him – This Means War, anyone?
The new film, from writer and director Josh Trank, is biopic which tells the true-life tale of Al Capone’s final years in Chicago.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film’s synopsis reads:
A ruthless businessman and bootlegger who ruled Chicago with an iron fist, Al ‘Fonzo’ Capone was the most infamous and feared gangster of American lore.
At the age of 47, following nearly a decade of imprisonment, dementia rots Capone’s mind and his past becomes present as harrowing memories of his violent and brutal origins melt into his waking life.
Though the pictures of his latest transformation don’t exactly suggest it, Tom Hardy revealed in a recent interview with Esquire that he’s based the voice of Capone on Bugs Bunny which, apparently, ‘sounds like the cartoon rabbit with a severe case of vocal fry’.
The 40-year-old actor has previously shared images of himself as Capone. Most impressively, the mugshot of Hardy as the infamous gangster, featured on a fake Department of Justice Bureau of Investigation document, was seriously realistic.
And while the actor likes to post snippets and teasers of his films on Instagram, the director of Fonzo – Josh Trank – has taken to Twitter to finally shared his own image of Hardy in his latest role.
Check it out:
Worth the wait, right? It does, however, give us a sneak pick into Capone’s infamous nickname – Scarface.
Though he would claim he got his scars fighting in France in World War I, the markings actually came from a bar fight in the Harvard Inn on Coney Island, New York.
Capone apparently insulted a lady at the bar, and her very brave brother decided to take action against the gangster, slashing him with a knife three times across his face and neck.
Though it might sound like a pretty badass nickname, he apparently hated it.
Here endeth the lesson.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.